Marooned in Ammon: Chapter 1
by Enthurzan
Summary: Space Engineers story of Bulthrad Monovan, and his fight for survival in the Ammon Sector of the Asteroid Belt. When a mining mission turns into a catastrophe, Monovan must find a way to get back and prevent his almost certain death in the vast, unforgiving darkness of space.


Chapter 1

_The Hephaestus_

I sat in the Orbix Mining Co. office waiting for his new tag. After leaving my home, I had signed up to worked with Orbix to help mine and explore the new Ammon Sector of the asteroid belt. They said that the pay was good but that there was unusual comet activity with the possibility of death. I didn't care; it payed $15 and hour, and I couldn't afford to not have a job any longer. "Bulthrad Monovan!" called the clerk.I arose and grabbed my tag from the clerk, and tired man with a stubbly, grey beard and decrepit hat. " You'll be workin' in the Ammon sector, as ya' know. Go check with the suitor over there to get your suit and get on the _Hephaestus_."

"Do you..."

"Herald George!"

I left the room and got in line for the space suits. Orbix used the cheapest kind, so workers didn't get jetpacks. All the suit came was a grappling hook and a small screen for time, orders, and a small map for navigation in the catacombs of the asteroids they would be mining. After grabbing the spacesuit, I headed through the airlock and grabbed a seat on the mining rig. Each major rig had a crew of 7: Two pilots and five miners. The _Hephaestus _was special as it was one of the few ships that had a mining ship on it. This little ship was tucked away in the ship's front docking port which was lucky enough to be big enough to fit the ship. However, the hanger was like a junkyard. Parts of old ships and equipment were strewn about on the floor. The old Orbix Model B med station was in tatters, so bad that the crew wouldn't use it in fear that the surgical arms would impale them. The ship's quarters were a mouse hole, a perfectly square room designed to cram as many workers in it as possible. Despite the whining of the MWU, Orbix wouldn't change the way they run their company.

When the _Hephaestus _finally left the Earth station, the loneliness of the crew was palpable. Because of the reduced time it took to get to the asteroid belt and the fact that they were leaving from a Martian station meant that Orbix didn't feel the need put the crew in stasis. Nor did they feel the need to install some basic defense system. Ammon was known for its unusually comet activity, especially since it was quite close to Ceres, a major colony just a couple days away. Daniel, the ship's captain, took the need to fly the ship the entire way as he was scarred from an accident that happened in his children. He claims the ship's computers went nuts and almost flew the ferry into an asteroid. Says that the ship near nailed the thing and everyone would have died. Ever since, Dan had to fly his ships by hand the whole way.

Yurgan, the ship's main mechanic, was off doing maintenance on the ship's ion engines with Jon, the main mining lead. Liam Smith and Chris Hughes were on the bridge checking flight patterns, and Terry Bor, the pilot, was preparing the mining vessel for the mining operation which left me alone in the cabins. I decided to do some exploring as I was fresh off the Martian colony and had never been in a mining rig before. I left the cabin and walked down the hallway toward the crysis room. Even though we were using the tubes, the ship could go all the way to Titan. From my vantage point down the hall I could make out the ship's curve as the living areas spun around the electrical core of the rig. Most of the older ships used the centripetal force in giant, circular ships that spun around the central engines and fuel tanks. As I entered the crysis room, I noticed a tear in the wall where the electrical wires were showing. Damn Orbix, bastards never take care of their ships.

The crysis room was built in a giant circle with the tubes lining it on the outside and the primary energy wires up the center. There was a small rail on the circumference of the room that allowed a robot to unplug us from the crysis state. Kind weird, being woken up by a robot. Most people where I lived have never seen a robot in real life, much less an android. Only the richest on Earth could afford that.

After five weeks on the ship, we finally arrived in the Ammon sector. There were a couple of large asteroids, but for the most parts, the sector was empty. I saw far off comet with a silvery, blue tail off in the distance in the direction of Jupiter, but I took no notice. Liam would probably give us a heads-up if anything dangerous was heading our way, and since figured Liam was a good navigator, I figured that wouldn't happen.

" Alright guys, we've arrived at our target, asteroid LR-382. She's about a mile across and contains mostly copper, so let's be good workers and get all this copper. We can pretty much get a couple hundreds tons and load it into the back of the ship for return to Orbix," said Dan over the PA. "Bor, i want you to prep the ship so we can leave tomorrow. We gotta get has much of this stuff as possible."

A small click noise signaled the end of the announcement, but before I could react, Yurgan sprinted past me toward the bridge. _That was odd_, I thought. However, I kept walking and eventually arrived at the hangar. I noticed that Bor was working on the ship. "Hey, Bor, how old is that ship there?"

"Oh, uh, hey Monovan. She's just over a decade old. This was actually one of the first miners commissioned by Orbix for the mining business. It runs on a…"

"OK, Bor, I got it." Bor was the geek of the ship. According to Dan and Chris who had flown with him before, he wouldn't shut up when talking about ships and their parts. Weird how his obsession with spaceships didn't lead to something besides mining.

After taking another look around the hangar, I headed back to my cabin. On Earth time, it was about ten p.m. at night, and Orbix required us to have a set schedule where the ship couldn't be bothered. As I sat on the cold, hard cot, a massive explosion shook the ship. I noticed the ship losing gravity so I quickly put on a spacesuit in case of a depressurization and swung myself out the door and down the hallway. Wreckage was floating in the hallway, and the lights were off. I propelled myself down to the hanger and found that the blast door had been ripped off and thrown out the wall. I looked for Bor but only found a blood spatter on the wall. When I finally got myself to the miner, I found his legs where they had been ripped off his body. I grabbed his tag and then climbed into the miner. I told myself that if I was going to get out of this, I had to get off the ship and have a source of oxygen. I tethered a few crates that read FOOD and a couple of batteries and the began pouring over the controls. All I could read was a couple of lines before another explosion pushed the ship out of the hangar and into space. _Shit_. I grabbed the joystick and hurled it to the left to face the ship. Parts of the ship had been flung out into space, and the ship's hull was dotted with thousands of holes. Where the right side of the hangar's door used to be was a giant scratch that had torn through the ship's port side. Guessing from the view I figured I was the only one left. The _Hephaestus_'s bridge had been destroyed and I knew that Dan wouldn't have had enough time to put on a suit before the vacuum of space devoured him and spit out his freeze-dried remains. At that moment a shower of micro asteroids struck my ship and i was thrust into the vast, unforgiving darkness of space…

Next Chapter will come out next week...


End file.
